


How to Break

by exfatalist



Series: How-To Guides [4]
Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Alien Biology, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Drug Addiction, Frottage, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Spoilers, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 01:53:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exfatalist/pseuds/exfatalist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team disbands after finding the Scarlet Witch and Teddy is at a loss for how to handle Billy's depression. College proves to be just as difficult, socially, as high school had been, especially when they're both keeping secrets from each other.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>Young Avengers set in an Omegaverse, covering Avengers: Children's Crusade and through Young Avengers Vol 2, Issue #4. From this part on, the series takes place in a speculative future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Break

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings** : This story contains mild spoilers for Hawkeye #9 and Young Avengers (Vol 2) #1-#4. For a more detailed account of potentially triggering material, as the fic has been tagged for, please check the notes at the end of the page.

“You should get out while you can,” was Tommy’s advice right before he left.

They had both been living with the Kaplans since ... well, Tommy had been there since before Latveria. It had taken the civil war and everything that happened afterwards for him and Billy to realize that Tommy didn’t actually commute from Jersey and it was only a matter of time - and convincing - before they were able to fold Billy’s soul twin into the strange assortment of family within the Kaplans' condo. 

Before Mt. Wundagore and invading Latveria, before the Scarlet Witch came back and Eli left for good and Cassie died in her dad’s arms, they’d had this running bet on how long it would take Tommy to get tired of a normal family. Billy low-balled it, said his brother wouldn’t be able to stand a week. But Teddy had bet high and had won out for a while, until right after graduation.

As it turned out, as much as Tommy really did love having a place to belong, _forever_ was a pretty long while to sit and watch depression eat away at someone. Especially someone he loved.

He told Teddy to get out, argued that it might be a big enough move to jolt Billy out of his funk, but Teddy knew better. It wasn’t just depression that had Billy by the throat and it was so much more than just guilt. It was the same thing that sent Eli away and had Tommy moonlighting at a superhero temp agency, the thing that inspired Kate to seek out Clint Barton in Brooklyn and kept Teddy sketching away at costume redesigns in the back of his notebook. 

People dealt with being broken in different ways. They took themselves out of the line of fire completely or prepared for being hurt again in the future. It was just that simple. 

Teddy had lost someone before to the unexpected violence of being a superhero. He’d gathered up his mom in a bronze urn and scattered her ashes in the statuary garden of Avengers mansion. He _dealt_ with that, with having his whole world shattered and being left to pick up the pieces, and it made him _stronger_. 

But he didn’t deal with it alone. No one had been there for him like Billy had, fumbling and uncertain of his words, but loving and patient and wanting so badly to _fix_ things. He let Teddy cry on his shoulder as often as he needed, wiped away Teddy’s tears afterward, and refused to treat him like a fragile, breakable thing when it was done.

The first time he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was in love with Billy Kaplan was on the roof, before a storm, when he dried Teddy's eyes with the hem of his shirt and suddenly the world didn't seem as bleak. Teddy knew then that the lives they had been dealt, by fate or by design, were often too short and that whatever happiness he wanted out of his life, he wanted to find and share it with Billy. 

The only problem was, after months of patiently waiting it out, Teddy had yet to see Billy begin to deal with what happened in Latveria. He didn't talk about it and he certainly didn’t cry. What Billy seemed to do was bottle everything up and keep a firm lid on it, just going through the day to day motions of a life. It was obvious even to the casual observer that he wasn't fine. The guilt and the blame he felt for what happened took even the things Billy had always been confident with and turned them against him, until suddenly _nothing_ he did was right and _everything_ that went wrong had done so by his influence.

After graduation, days during the summer just sort of melted together without the stability of a school routine. The Kaplans expressed regret that Teddy’s part time job didn’t have a flexible enough schedule to allow him to go on vacation with them, but the way Mrs. Kaplan’s eyes flickered toward Billy's room told him that they were glad that he would be on hand to look after Billy, in case their son forgot to do so for himself. Mr. Kaplan called him the man of the house, joked about not throwing any wild parties, and left an emergency credit card in the bottom of a kitchen drawer. There was a list of chores to do on the fridge and instructions for how to water the plants above a piece of paper with emergency contacts. It was blissfully normal and for a long while after the house was silent, Teddy thought about how he'd never been to the beach and had always wanted to go.

It was the first time he felt well and truly frustrated with Billy. He could have gotten the time off for a summer vacation if he had pressed for it, except for _Billy_. Billy was holed up in his room, like he had been every day since they graduated, staring out the window at nothing in particular. Billy hadn’t shaved in weeks, hadn’t showered in at least a few days, and only ate when he seemed to remember that his body needed it. Billy wasn’t doing a single damn thing to get over what happened, while the rest of the team had mourned and moved on in their own ways. 

_Billy_.

"Enough is enough," Teddy said when he let himself into Billy's room much later, after his frustrations had boiled off and he felt calm enough to speak rationally. They had the house to themselves for a change and it seemed like the best time to have it out about this, to force Billy to confront these things head on and finally react to them.

Billy turned his head from the window he'd been staring out of, but didn't look very attentive.

"I've tried to be patient and supportive," Teddy went on, "but you need to talk to _someone_. Right now. - No, scratch that. You need to talk to _me_ , Billy."

It must have been the tone of his voice. The firm, no-nonsense sort of tone he used when he talked Speed down from exploding things in a fight. Billy looked chastised and Teddy wasn't sure what he had been expecting. 

"I'm sorry," Billy supplied in a hollow voice.

"You should be," Teddy went on. He had come too far to back down from it now and knew that if he couldn't face Billy's kicked puppy routine head on, he'd never get anywhere. "Because if I've learned anything from being Hulkling, it's that life is too short for you to be sitting in here wasting yours."

He thought about what Tommy said before leaving. He thought about putting things in his life aside, all because Billy refused to handle this. He thought about how frustrated he had become, but didn't really expect any of those feelings to surface in the form of what he said next: " _And mine_."

That caught Billy’s focus immediately and his brow knit in a concerned expression. It was gone in a moment, replaced with resignation, and he sighed. "Are you breaking up with me?"

It was a low blow, but Teddy retorted before he could stop himself, "And give you another reason to sit in the dark moping?"

The question must have resonated, because Billy looked up again and almost, honest to God, smiled. The half a smile tugged hard at Teddy's heartstrings and his tone gentled as he went on, "Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, B, but you're stuck with me. For better or for worse."

There wasn't an immediate change in Billy's expression. It was gradual, shifting from hesitant amusement to realization and straight from there to confusion. "I - " he began, then stopped short, his weight shifting to one foot as if he meant to step closer to Teddy and thought better of it. "That kind of sounded like ... some sort of proposal."

Teddy was with him every step of the way, tilting his chin down in an encouraging nod as Billy arrived at the conclusion. "It did," he agreed.

"Are you - you’re not proposing to me, are you?"

"Depends," Teddy answered, taking the step forward Billy wouldn't allow himself. "Are you going to do something other than mope around in your room? Are you going to talk to me, let me help you?"

For a moment, the realest moment Teddy thought he'd experienced to date, Billy's expression was everything he'd hoped for. Alive with emotion, with happiness and something that looked like hope. It was short-lived, though, and the minute his expression started to fall Teddy reached out for him and drew him in close, desperate to keep that look on Billy’s face. “What’s wrong? B?”

Billy didn’t answer for a moment and Teddy just clutched him close, let Billy bury his face into the soft material of the shirt covering his shoulder and shake his head in a jerky motion. “Don’t,” was all Billy could seemingly get out, just a desperate little plea for Teddy to stop.

He didn’t understand, not at first, and just hugged Billy tight, pressed his nose into Billy’s hair, and breathed him in. It was wholly different than he remembered, but they hadn’t been this close in ages, not since Latveria. But it still felt good to be close again, better than Teddy thought he deserved, yet somehow still not good enough for Billy. It took Teddy a long moment to realize that Billy wasn’t shaking his head any longer, but that there was a tremor in his shoulders. The breath on Teddy’s neck had become ragged with tears.

“Billy,” he tried to soothe, relieved that at long last Billy was _reacting_ emotionally and simultaneously horrified that he had been the cause of it. “Billy, what’s wrong? Talk to me. Please.”

It took some moments for Billy’s tears to subside enough for him to speak, but Teddy waited him out patiently. He stroked Billy’s back, small circles just between his shoulderblades, as if something so simple could help alleviate a problem so upsetting.

“Are you only asking to get a reaction?” Billy finally wondered. He had both hands on Teddy’s chest, as if prepared to push him away depending on the answer, but ultimately just curled his fingers into the fabric of Teddy’s shirt and held on. 

“Billy,” Teddy said softly, trying to draw his attention, but Billy didn’t look up. He was staring down into the space between their bodies and all Teddy could do was card his fingers through the hair at the back of Billy’s head, fingertips digging gently into his scalp, massaging. 

He bent down and pressed a kiss to Billy’s hair, answering honestly and just a little muffled, “I wasn’t exaggerating when I said being Hulkling taught me about how short life can be.”

Billy sniffled, but didn’t interrupt. Teddy kept working his fingers, right down to Billy’s neck, as he spoke.

“I’ve always known that whatever happiness I can find in my life, I wanted to share with you,” Teddy went on. “You’re the one person who understands and accepts all of me, B. And you’ve never asked me to be anything else for you. Like ... like I’m enough, just as I am. I don’t need to be an alpha or some alien messiah or a Kree warrior. I can just be Teddy and you’ll still love me.”

By then, Billy’s fingers had relaxed their grip on his shirt and the other boy sagged forward against Teddy’s chest, as if defeated or exhausted. Except his arms wound around Teddy’s waist and he squeezed himself close.

“I wanted you to finally react to something,” Teddy admitted. He felt Billy tense against him and hurriedly assured, “But I didn’t _just_ want a reaction. I’d be lying if I said I came in here thinking I’d ask you to marry me. I was thinking about how I couldn’t leave you, how I love you so damn much, and it just kind of came out that way. When I said it, I knew I’d finally hit on what I wanted, but - Billy, we can’t work, not if you won’t let yourself move on.”

Billy was quiet for a long moment and Teddy refused to rush him. He just stood there, with Billy slumped against him, waiting for an answer - any answer - and fearing that it might be some disheartening question about whether or not Billy deserved to be happy after what happened.

Instead, with all the slow beauty of a flower unfurling into bloom, the tension relaxed from Billy’s body and he nodded. The answer was so quiet that Teddy almost missed it. But it was there, soft on Billy’s lips. “Yes.”

The relief was overwhelming. He remembered all the butterflies in his stomach the night he leaned in after walking Billy home from their second date and kissed him chastely on the lips. Teddy thought that would be the most nerve-wracking moment of his life and it had been, until he’d forgotten how to breathe while waiting for Billy’s answer. Now the breath he held bubbled out of him on a soft laugh. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Billy repeated, louder this time, and finally lifted his head. Tears still made tracks down his cheeks, but the difference lay with the smile beneath them, rather than the confused worry that had been there before. 

And Teddy didn't care. He leaned in and kissed Billy with everything he had, not minding the salty taste of the kiss or the scratch of Billy's whiskers or the awkward way their teeth clashed when they both tilted their heads to the left, having forgotten how to fit together in the long months of distance between them.

It was still the best kiss Teddy had ever had.

◊

Somewhere between getting engaged and moving into Third North, Teddy thought really hard about punching Loki in the face.

Existential crisis did that to a guy.

He liked to think that not punching Loki in the face was a sign of his upstanding moral fiber. Being confronted with the suggestion that he was nothing more than the result of a reality warper’s wishful daydreaming and not reacting with arguably-deserved violence just went to show that he was an all around pretty cool guy.

But in the months since saving the world from themselves, the exchange became a tacit secret he went out of his way to keep from Billy. It wasn’t that he believed Loki, not by a long shot, but he didn’t want to be responsible for planting the seed of doubt for Billy that Loki had attempted to plant for him.

Teddy was real. 

He had always been real.

_Always_.

◊

None of the residence halls at NYU were segregated along gender lines, but they took it into account where roommates were concerned. Which meant that Teddy still had to put _something_ on his application, even if he didn’t feel like he particularly belonged in any of the categories.

At the time he was working on college applications, Tommy had been on hand to point out that, though completely unbiased about his own gender, betas were the best to be around, bottom line. He used the Kaplan condo as an example of how easygoing betas were: a family of betas, with one omega in their midst, living in relative harmony, without a pissing contest in sight. He then helpfully added that, realistically speaking, no one in their right mind was going to believe that Teddy was a beta.

And Tommy was right. After a few years of being Hulkling, he wasn’t the skinny kid who was too afraid to change in front of his classmates in gym anymore. He had muscle mass and lots of it. Enough, Tommy pointed out, to put him firmly in the ‘alpha male’ category to anyone not doing a sniff test. Which meant that if he wanted to pass for anything else, he would have to change himself. The idea of consciously shifting his body mass to appear small enough to fit into another category, and doing it throughout the entirety of his college years, didn’t sit well with Teddy.

He’d selected ‘alpha male’ from the options listed and didn’t give it another thought until he was standing in the middle of his dorm at Third North, boggling at the fact that he had been paired off with three very stereotypical alpha males in a quad. The guy who had claimed the twin bed by the window in their bedroom seemed all right, he apparently played more hockey than football, but still made eyes at Billy the minute he came in with Mr. Kaplan and several of Teddy’s boxes. 

It made Teddy cringe internally and he wondered, weirdly, if it was possible for someone with only a physical sex, without a scented gender, to display alpha tendencies after so long of _pretending_ to have them. He didn’t want to do anything ridiculous, he didn’t want to bite Billy’s neck in front of God and his three roommates and Mr. Kaplan to show that he was claimed and off limits and that Teddy’d tear off the arms off an alpha who tried to get near him. Except that he kind of did.

Mr. Kaplan left soon enough, after inviting them back home for dinner that coming Saturday, but Billy lingered to help Teddy make his bed and set up his computer and put up the new Superman poster he got Teddy as a dorm-warming gift. He promised to text when he got back to Weinstein and Teddy walked him down to the shuttle, worried all the while that his goodbye kiss might be telling. But Billy practically jumped into his arms and kissed him stupid, so it didn’t much matter, in the end.

“That boyfriend of yours,” his roommate said when he got back upstairs. 

Teddy raised both eyebrows in an uneasy, questioning expression, just watching as his roommate made a low whistling sound that was usually accompanied by a cat-call. “I’m not into omega guys,” he went on, “but he’s pretty hot, man.”

This was part of what Teddy never understood about alpha mentality. He was being given a compliment of some kind, probably about his prowess in obtaining such a mate, but Teddy just didn’t get it. He might have broken the ice and asked Billy out the first time, he might have even asked Billy to marry him someday, but he wouldn’t exactly call himself _dominant_ in the relationship. He didn’t catch Billy, he wasn’t _claiming_ him, they just talked about things like rational people and decided to be together.

What was so hard to understand about that?

A lot, apparently.

Within the first day, all of his roommates knew about his boyfriend. _The omega_. Not Billy, of course. He didn’t even think they were listening when he chimed in that his boyfriend had a name. No, it was _the omega_.

And they knew _the omega_ had been in the dorm, that he had made Teddy’s bed, that he had put up Teddy’s posters. They immediately started speculating about whether or not _the omega_ would be back, if he cooked or cleaned, and by the time they got around to in general talking about omegas in heat, Teddy just reached for his iPod.

So, Third North wasn’t ideal for him. Dorm life in general wasn’t ideal, but the rest of the college experience beyond that was better than Teddy could have hoped.

When Teddy was younger, just coming into his awkward teenage phase and not entirely certain of anything, his mom would tell him that nothing in high school ultimately mattered. That the important parts of life were never going to be found on a standardized test or that in twenty years he will have learned more about life from living it than he could ever find inside a classroom. And at the time, he was just angry enough to think that she had no idea what it was like to be weird and different and confused.

It wasn’t until after she was gone that he realized how weird and different and confused she must have been, coming from an alien planet to raise a baby all alone, and he wished he could have told her that he finally understood that.

Once he got to college, he knew beyond any doubt how right she had been while trying to console his teenage angst. That knowledge kept him grounded and, in the quiet hours of the night over fall break, nestled against the curve of Billy’s back as they shared a bed while Billy’s roommate was gone for the week, he told Billy about it.

“I like that,” Billy said softly. He fitted Teddy’s arm around him like a blanket and twined their fingers together to hold Teddy’s hand. “Your mom was so ... ”

Billy couldn’t think of a word, but Teddy didn’t really need him to. He just nodded and closed his eyes, the hurt of losing her still too fresh to think about for long. It had healed a lot before summer, he’d had to push past the pain pretty quickly after it happened, but after Billy reached into another dimension and pulled out some sort of creepy _Other Mother_ in a misguided effort to fix things, it hurt a lot more.

“ ... you,” Billy finally said. “When you tell me about her and then I look at you, I can see it exactly. How she raised you, the important things she taught you, all the best parts of herself she passed on.”

It surprised him and Teddy didn’t know what to say, probably couldn’t have said anything if he wanted to. There was a lump in his throat that hurt. 

Slowly, Billy turned in his arms until they were lying face-to-face. He tangled their legs up together and tugged until the body-warmed blankets covered Teddy’s bare arms, engulfing him in a comfortable heat. “Some day,” Billy went on softly, “if you want, you’ll have kids you can raise the same way, teach the same lessons. And when you look at them, you’ll see her.”

Teddy bit the inside of his cheek to hold back the unexpected emotions that Billy’s words resonated deep in his chest. It was true, but it wasn’t anything Teddy had stopped to think about and it hurt in a way that was good, that was clean, like a surgeon’s scalpel excising an infection he didn’t even know was there.

Billy could have gone on, could have easily kept talking to press the point home, but instead he just leaned in and kissed Teddy’s forehead. It was soft and sweet, like some sort of permission, and Teddy just curled into him easily, lost in thought and emotion. 

He had to be real, Teddy reasoned, the thought popping into his head unbidden in the quiet darkness of the dormitory. His mom had been real, his biological parents had been real and each of them had been from two real alien civilizations, with millennia of history apiece. There was no way, absolutely no way, that the off-handed daydream of anyone, even someone who could warp reality, could create someone with such history and detail. His mom had a life, before and after she came to Earth. She would always put her keys down on the table by the door and would always forget they were there by morning, frantically searching pockets and purse until she remembered. How could someone like Billy, someone who had locked himself out of his dorm four separate times in two months, create a whole living, breathing person with that much personality and influence?

It wasn’t possible.

And he hated himself just a little for considering that maybe, just maybe, it might be.

◊

Teddy was looking forward to spring break.

He would have been lying if he said that it wasn’t for entirely overt, ridiculously sexual reasons.

Spring break was when Billy usually scheduled a heat. The last few years had been difficult for Billy with that, between the stress of Kang sending him into it prematurely and then what happened to him in Forty-Two. After Latveria, Billy kept on his suppressants altogether, with no break in the cycle. They had been so distant - Billy had been so distant from everyone - that it wasn’t until his medicine needed to be refilled a week early that anyone actually noticed. A few days later, Teddy happened to overhear Mr. Kaplan lecturing Billy on the dangers of over-suppressing, about how his next heat would have to be natural, without even mild control suppressants, to let his body normalize.

It wasn’t anything Teddy should know and it certainly wasn’t something he should be even mildly fixated on, but he couldn’t help either. He wanted to share that experience with his partner, wanted to be what Billy needed, as much as he was nervous to find out whether or not he was ever going to be _enough_.

But Billy was the one who set the pace between them, set the tempo. While they were closer now than they had been before, they had only slept together in the strictest sense of the word. They cuddled, too. Teddy was probably a champion cuddler. And sometimes Billy kissed him like he meant it and Teddy would almost let his hands slip lower, but Billy pulled away and smiled and Teddy’s ache of desire was replaced with an ache in his chest. Whatever he wanted could wait.

But even if he wasn’t an alpha, even if he didn’t feel things like an indescribable need when it came to sex and his partner’s cycles, Teddy still _had_ feelings. He was still unbelievably attracted to Billy, still wanted to be with him, and sometimes it was a desire that was difficult to ignore. From time to time, when those meaningful kisses would pan out into nothing in particular, Teddy would wonder if something was wrong, if they weren’t as _fixed_ as he thought they were, if Billy’s thoughts were still trapped in Latveria and his own self-loathing. 

As much as he had been the one to demand Billy talk to him, to demand that Billy try to work past those feelings and move on, Teddy wasn’t entirely sure how to word his fears when it came to intimacy. After all, sex wasn’t really a determining factor in the success of a relationship and it wasn’t even a required part of a successful one for some people. It was just, well, things felt _different_ now and he didn’t know how much of that was a problem they needed to work out.

So, spring break felt like a natural thing to wait for. He had no idea how to word his concerns, no idea if they really were concerns or the just result of Billy suppressing last time, so it just seemed logical to wait it out.

“Kate is going to Italy for spring break,” Teddy announced in the midst of their study-makeout-Halo date. 

Billy’s roommate, a nice omega girl from Florida, was hardly ever around after pledging a sorority the previous semester, which gave them plenty of opportunity to spend time with each other that wasn’t around any of Teddy’s obnoxious roommates. 

“Promontorio del Gargano?” Billy wondered, flopping dramatically back onto his bed and half onto Teddy’s chest to grab for the can of Pringles. “I hate her. She really is Tony Stark. I want to go to Vegas or Cancun or San Fran. She’s going to another country altogether.”

Teddy laughed softly. “I wouldn’t mind going to Cali. Not really the happening spring break spot.” Which, for him, was a bonus. The wild parties and drinking weren’t really something he felt compelled to participate in, weren’t really the college experience he was after.

Billy munched on chips sulkily, letting Teddy stroke his messy hair. 

“Well, she was telling me that her apartment is free that week,” Teddy went on. “She got the locks changed after Mockingbird and Black Widow and Spider-Woman broke in. So ... if we wanted ... ”

“... to have a staycation at Kate’s?” Billy asked. Teddy could feel him rolling his eyes, even if he couldn’t see it from their awkward angling. “Sounds great. She gets hot Italian boys and we get to water her ficus.”

Teddy stole a chip from the cannister. “I was just thinking, it’s more privacy than we would get here. Or back home.”

It was as close to outright mentioning it as Teddy was going to get and it still took Billy a while to get what he was suggesting. When it seemed to finally sink in, Billy just laughed. “Oh. God. Wow, I forgot about that. I mean, I didn’t _forget_ , but I forgot to tell you.”

That snatched up all of Teddy’s attention and he twisted to look down at Billy, trying to check his concern. “Forgot to tell me what?”

“I went to the Omega’s Health Free Clinic and got a different dosage of suppressants,” Billy explained with a shrug. “I don’t need to do the spring break thing anymore. So, hey, if you wanted to go to San Fran, there’s still time to book a hotel.”

While Teddy was rendered speechless and concerned, to the point of flustering and not knowing what to say, Billy shifted to reach for his laptop and did a quick search for hotels in the area. It felt like a bait and switch, like Billy was doing his best to change the subject, but Teddy didn’t know how to put that into words without sounding too accusatory. 

Nor did he know how exactly to say that he overheard Billy’s dad, who was a medical doctor, telling him about the dangers of over-suppressing. It was one of those things he shouldn’t know, one of those things too embarrassing to admit to after the fact, but also too concerning to dismiss.

“Isn’t that, uh, dangerous?” Teddy finally asked.

“What, you think the clinic would give me a prescription if it was?” Billy’s tone wasn’t exactly as playful as he was trying to make it sound.

Teddy hesitated, reached for another chip, then said, “I don’t know. I’m just - you know, thinking. _Worried_. After the last few times. I keep thinking about you in the Negative Zone, B. That scared the hell out of me.”

Billy finally looked up and twisted around to kiss Teddy. It was soft and sweet and not all like he meant it to lead anywhere. “I’m fine, Ted. I promise.”

Somehow, Teddy wasn’t reassured. But he didn’t think Billy would do anything to purposely hurt himself, either. So, when Billy prompted him to look at the hotels in San Francisco, he did. Then they checked venues to see what was going on during their week off and everything admittedly looked pretty exciting.

When Teddy hesitated to actually book anything, because it seemed like an unnecessary expense, Billy kissed him again, with more feeling, and said, “I think I owe you a beach vacation.”

And, well, _technically_ , Billy kind of did. So, Teddy let it go and they booked a hotel. 

It was simple and thrilling; a vacation without any adult supervision, because _they_ were adults, somehow. They went to dance clubs with X’s marked on the backs of their hands and spent long hours on the beach listening to the gulls and the waves and the classic rock on the radio of the group of frat guys playing beer pong too close to the tide. Billy got a sunburn on his back when the salt water washed off some of his supposedly waterproof sunscreen, so he spooned up against Teddy’s back for a change that night. And they made love for the first time in ages, with Billy grinding his dick against Teddy’s ass and breathing heavily in his ear, his hand tight and sweet around Teddy’s cock while he asked in a soft, furtive whisper if Ted liked it that way. Teddy came harder than he ever had, wondering not for the first time what it would be like to have Billy inside him.

The next year, they went to Provincetown, because it was one of those places known for gender neutrality and equality, where anyone could be anything and love anyone. It wasn’t a happening spring break location, specifically, but it was quiet and nice and there was Cabaret Fest. One morning, while the gray predawn seeped into their hotel room and while Billy was spooned up behind him, Teddy slipped a ring onto Billy’s left hand that he’d worked all year to afford. It was a promise. _Soon_.

After that, their next spring break was spent on a yacht in Sardinia, because Kate really was Tony Stark and she felt it necessary to get the gang back together after several years of growing up apart. Her hands were callused from bowstrings as she grabbed Billy’s hand and cooed over his ring, then tried to convince them both to have a destination wedding in Europe. Tommy was all for it, arguing that Billy could just teleport everyone if Kate’s private jet was busy that day, and Eli just offered his sincere congratulations. That night, straddling Billy’s hips and sucking on his fingers to keep quiet, Teddy fell in love with the way the moonlight reflections from the water’s surface shone through the cabin porthole and cast Billy’s adoring expression in a blue much more modest than his magic.

By their senior year, they had an apartment near campus and were gearing up for spring break, both of them needing to get out from from under the stress of the semester. Teddy came home from his early classes, prepared to find Billy sacked out on the couch in a nest of anatomy and physiology books, up to his eyebrows in papers. Instead, he found Billy face down on the bathroom floor, barely breathing.

A day later, after a painful conversation with Jeff and Rebecca and kicking off the Kaplan-Altman emergency contact telephone tree by calling Kate, who proceeded to call everyone else on God’s green earth that might want to know that he was in the hospital, Billy came to.

“You son of a bitch,” was the first thing Teddy said to him, without moving from where he was half-leaning against the edge of the hospital bed with a death grip on Billy’s hand. He had only moved a grand total of two times from the chair by Billy’s bed, perched and waiting for Billy to wake up.

There was a stack of pill blister packs on the table next to the bed, all of which had three empty rows and one full. Each carried the same drug name as the prescription bottle from the Kaplan’s family doctor, which only had more pills of a certain color in it than others. They all looked at odds with the vase of sunflowers Kate had brought by earlier that day and the pile of business cards, most of which were emblazoned with a stylized ‘A’ symbol.

Billy must have known, without needing to ask, what had happened. But he looked confused and tried to tighten his fingers to grip Teddy’s hand. He was too weak from the treatment, so Teddy just held on tighter. 

“You’re pre-med,” Teddy accused, when he could get his voice to cooperate again. “You knew exactly what you were doing and you kept fucking doing it. Why?”

Whatever he had felt years ago, as a stupid kid concerned and too awkward to ask, had vanished from him completely. Teddy felt sick for not having made more demands when they were younger, for not having checked up on Billy and done his research. But he honestly, with every ounce of his heart, thought that Billy wouldn’t lie to him and wouldn’t do anything to hurt himself. 

He had trusted Billy completely.

He always had.

Billy closed his eyes in a slow blink and when he opened them again there were tears. 

Teddy did his best to not be moved, to not let himself be swayed by Billy’s kicked puppy expression, but soon enough realized how unkind a thought that was. Billy’s tears were genuine, more genuine than they had been in years, and the heart monitor he was hooked up to picked up on the erratic staccato of his suddenly racing heart, echoing how frightened Billy was in the face of the question.

“I ... I couldn’t ... stop,” he answered softly, voice ragged from the intubation the paramedics had given him on the way to the emergency room. 

Teddy let go of his hand, hating the lost expression on Billy’s face, and reached for the cup of water on the nearby tray table. He brought the straw to Billy’s lips and helped him have huge gulps of water. Eventually, Billy pulled back and sighed heavily, tears still leaking from the corners of his eyes.

“Why, Billy?” Teddy repeated, taking up his partner’s hand again. 

Billy answered, but struggled for every word. “I didn’t want to feel. After Latveria.”

When all Teddy did was look at him expectantly, Billy explained, “If you double the dose, it’s like - like going numb. Emotionally. Nothing feels as bad anymore. It hurts, but it’s like you’re disconnected from it. Like stubbing your toe when your foot is asleep.” 

Hearing that admission, knowing what Billy was doing and how, made Teddy’s stomach twist into sick knots. He had known that something wasn’t quite right, he had known years ago, but he hadn’t pressed. No, Teddy was so caught up in trying to be mindful that Billy's body was his own business, trying not to be a possessive alpha, that he ignored things that might have been warning signs or red flags.

He didn’t know if he could have done anything, if he could have helped, but Teddy couldn’t help but blame himself a little for not _trying_. 

“But we talked about Latveria,” Teddy finally said, tried to reason. He genuinely thought they were past this. 

“I know,” Billy sighed. He tried to lift his other hand, the one with the plethora of IVs coming out of it, and didn’t get far enough to cover his face. “I _know_. I just - I was going to stop. We talked and I felt okay, like everything was going to finally _be_ okay, and I wanted to stop, but we got to college and ... and the omegas there, T. It was ... I wasn’t expecting that.”

Teddy knew the confusion was evident on his face. He reached out and gently took Billy’s other hand, where it had flopped limply against his chest, and placed it above the blanket covering Billy’s stomach. “What do you mean?”

As he watched, Billy’s faced scrunched up in a pained expression while he tried his best to fight back more tears. “Remember my roommate freshman year? Laura?”

“She was nice,” Teddy offered, because he genuinely thought so. He didn’t see much of her, but she was always friendly.

Billy gave a watery laugh. “She wanted me to fuck her!” he blurted out. “Because, you know, omegas don’t count.”

All Teddy could do for a moment was stare. Laura from Florida, who got in on early admission and had put up a 1D poster on her half of the dorm, had tried to sleep with his fiance. It seemed outrageous, made no less so by the fact that Billy looked torn between laughing and crying while he recalled it.

“It was like some fucking _cult_ , okay?” Billy went on. There was outrage in his voice, soft but enough to give him the steam he needed to explain himself. “Omegas. I thought it would be great, you know? Going to college, meeting some people like me, but it wasn’t. No fucking way. It was all ... sync up your cycles, have a goddamn omega orgy when you all go into heat. And I’m sitting there telling Laura that I’m engaged, that I’m not interested, and she tells me that omegas don’t even count, so what’s the problem?”

“Okay,” Teddy said, as gently as he could manage. He reached up and pushed the fall of hair from Billy’s forehead, trying to soothe him as the heart monitor blipped disconcertingly. “But you wouldn’t have done that,” he pointed out. “You’re not like that, B.”

Billy laughed again, but did calm under the application of Teddy’s touch. He sighed and sank back into the pillows. “I know. But ... after I kept using the suppressants the first time, my dad told me I’d have to go off them completely for my next heat. And - and I didn’t know if I could. We’re great together, you know? After Forty-Two, when I was still coming down from that, you were amazing. But without even mild suppressants, totally natural? I’d probably need a knot to ... to ... and how could I ask you to do that?”

It honestly wasn’t something that Teddy ever thought about, though he’d had to sit through the embarrassing part of sex ed in high school that described the specific dynamics of it.

“And, so, I’ve got Laura telling me that omegas don’t count and that omegas can be just as satisfied with other omegas as they are with alphas,” Billy went on, sounding more miserable with each word. “Then this realization that I might have to ask you to change yourself for me. And I just ... _couldn’t_. I couldn’t do it, Ted. It was just so much easier to keep suppressing and just not think about any of it.”

That seemed to be the end of Billy’s explanation and Teddy sat there for a long moment, trying to process all the information and the backwards logic of it. He really did put a lot of stock in how accepting Billy had always been of him, the genderless freak he happened to be, but it never extended so far. He couldn’t imagine denying Billy something he physically needed or being upset that Billy would ask something like that of him. Maybe a few years ago it was different, maybe a few years ago he seemed like it might have broken his heart to shift a knot for Billy, but now? After all this? It seemed stupid to get upset over something so basic, so primal.

“You’re an idiot,” Teddy said after several long, awkward moments of silence. There was affection in his voice, but it was tempered with anger and hurt. “You’re such a fucking idiot, B. You could have talked to me. You could have said something - _anything_!”

“I know,” he answered quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Teddy shook his head. “You know I’d do anything for you. God, the things I _have_ done for you, Billy! You think I stuffed Hank Pym down a fucking laundry chute and broke into Forty-Two because _Cap_ asked me to? You think I invaded a whole goddamn country controlled by Dr. Doom because I was seriously interested in where the Scarlet Witch was?”

He didn’t know if it was wrong of him to raise his voice while Billy was in the hospital and hooked up to a heart monitor, if he shouldn’t vent his anger and frustration without thinking first about his words, but sometimes it didn’t matter. Sometimes things just needed to be said.

“I’m sorry,” Billy repeated and his tone was desperate in the face of Teddy’s anger.

“You’re a fucking idiot!” Teddy retorted and it broke the dam. He clutched Billy’s hand between both of his and dropped his forehead against it, eyes squeezing shut to hold back the sudden torrent of tears. “I love you more than anything, Bill. You’re all I have left in the world and you almost killed yourself because you couldn’t suck it up and talk to me. Because I couldn’t suck it up and talk to you. I knew something was wrong, I felt it in my gut, but I didn’t want to be overbearing. And look what happened! Look where we are now!”

Beneath the blanket, Billy was shaking with the force of the sobs that wracked his body, but he made a valiant effort to speak. He raised his other hand, tangled with tubes, to touch Teddy’s hair and then his cheek. “I’m sorry, Ted,” he said. “Please. Please, I’m so sorry. I - I want to get better. I want to stop being afraid, I want to be _okay_ ... ”

Teddy shook his head. He thought about the stack of cards on the bedside table, from each of the Avengers who stopped by over the last twenty-four hours to offer help or condolences or to look after Billy while Teddy went to get coffee. 

“You don’t understand,” Teddy said without lifting his head. “I called Kate after I called your parents. I didn’t know who else to call. So, she called Clint Barton, because she didn’t know who else to call. And he called Tony Stark, because I guess that’s who you call when you need to call in a favor for your friend’s friends.”

It took him a moment, but Teddy worked himself up to lifting his head, pressing a tearful kiss to Billy’s hand caught between his own. “Stark called in Strange and Banner, who met with your doctors. They had an experimental treatment to flush the rest of the suppressants from your system, but ... but they don’t know how your body will react, ultimately.”

As the words sunk in, Billy began to look worried. “What do you mean?”

Teddy wasn’t a doctor and had no real idea how to properly say something so difficult. He couldn’t even think of the way Strange put it when they broke the news to him and the Kaplans. “If you pull through your next heat,” he said, because they told him there was a small chance Billy _wouldn’t_ , “they’re not sure if you’ll ever be able to have kids.”

Seemingly defeated by the news, Billy relaxed limply back against the hospital bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Oh,” he finally said, a bit dumbly. “I ... I don’t know what to say.”

Unfortunately, neither did Teddy. He kissed Billy’s hand again and thought better of calling him a fucking idiot one more time. Instead, he just sat at Billy’s bedside while he tried to parse the news and held his hand when more tears came.

◊

Before Billy was released from the hospital, the Dean of Students Office signed off on his medical leave of absence paperwork and whatever additional pressure he felt about finals or graduation was lifted from his shoulders. There was a little tension when the Kaplans expressed a desire for Billy to come back home so they could look after him through his recovery, but - weirdly - it was Tommy who stepped in and volunteered to help Teddy look after Billy.

“You know, Altman,” he said, as they were watching Billy sign all his hospital paperwork from across the room, “I’m glad you didn’t get out when you had the chance. Billy’s an idiot.”

Teddy heard the smirk without needing to look over at Tommy to see it. “Yeah,” he agreed affectionately, “but he’s _my_ idiot.”

“Exactly,” Tommy said. “He needs someone like you in his life to make sure he doesn’t screw up worse than he has already.”

Part of Teddy wondered if Tommy meant screw up in the big, reality-altering sense, but he had long since come to the conclusion that if Billy wanted to warp reality, if Billy wanted to change things even subconsciously, they wouldn’t be in a situation like the one they were in now. 

All Teddy could do was agree and step forward to take over pushing Billy’s wheelchair from his nurse. Tommy gathered up the sunflowers from Kate and the business cards the Avengers had left and they took a slow, leisurely pace in wheeling Billy out of the hospital. 

Kate was waiting out front, leaning on the passenger’s side door of a violently purple car, and looked at Billy appraisingly over the tops of her aviators. “Kaplan, you look like shit,” she greeted.

Billy grinned. “I see Clint Barton’s influence has greatly improved your personality.”

“You know it!” declared a voice from inside the car, from where Hawkeye was apparently eating fries out of a paper bag, with his Converse-clad feet up on the dash. 

Teddy hadn’t even noticed him there and couldn’t help but laugh at the surprised expression on Billy’s face. 

Between the three of them, they helped Billy into the middle of the backseat and Teddy piled in on one side to let Billy lean against him while Tommy returned the wheelchair to the nurse who had followed them out. When they were all situated in the car and Clint had passed the fries back to Tommy, Kate pulled into the flow of traffic with a long blow of the car horn.

On the way home, Clint regaled them with a story about trashing a satellite dish with an arrow once a long time ago, that somehow blended seamlessly with an over sharing of information about the Avengers and their genders. Banner had irradiated scent glands and Danvers got fucked up by Kree superpowers and he wasn’t at liberty to discuss Captain America, but Clint, himself, had been personally screwed over by SHIELD nanotechnology in the gender category and with most of all that shit relying on smell and only a little on personality, it didn’t matter too much in the end. They were all just folk and needed props for being the most fucked up group of damaged goods who still routinely managed to save the world.

“I mean, I don’t see anyone else doing it,” Clint concluded. He still had his feet up on the dash and was draping his arm out the open car window, cupping his hand against the rush of air.

It was comforting, in an unexpected way. Teddy wasn’t the type of guy to commiserate about mutual _bad stuff_ happening amongst people he knew about, but the idea that those people could become that damaged - more damaged than Billy was now - and still come together the way the Avengers had was a moral to the story that he could get behind.

And it seemed to work for Billy, too. He was smiling softly as he tilted his head against Teddy’s shoulder and reached down to lace their fingers together, grasping onto Teddy’s hand. Turning his head, Teddy nuzzled into Billy’s hair and for the first time in a long while caught a whiff of that uniquely Billy scent, the lack of which had been the unnamed thing that settled into his gut and gnawed at him from the inside out. As fine as Billy had seemed all these years, that was the component that had been missing and having it back, suddenly, took Teddy’s breath away.

Nothing could have prepared either of them for this, but nothing had prepared them for anything else they had ever been through. They were still here and they were still together. For Teddy, that was more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warnings (cont)** : This story contains prescription drug abuse/addiction, as related to depression and anxiety, and the consequences thereof, including near-death and possible infertility in an Omegaverse setting.


End file.
